Course in HR studies in three parts
Part II:
What motivates a team?
Aren’t you the Linux guy? 🐧
MSc in Human Resource Management
University of Stirling
Alienation & motivation
Alienation
Alienation
“Alienation is where the individual feels that work is a necessity imposed upon him or her. Working under such conditions means abandoning one’s control over doing the job or of developing it”
—Rosenfeld & Wilson
Motivation
“Motivation is where the individual feels that work is sometimes good and sometimes bad, but that it is fulfilling, stasifying and capable of development in all ways”
—Rosenfeld & Wilson
Sounds familiar, techies?
Scrum
“At the sprint retrospective, the team:
Reflects on the past sprint, identifies and agrees on continuous process improvement actions.”
—Wikipedia
Perhaps
the most famous motivation model
Abraham says
“Needs which are satisified are no longer motivators”
Abraham says
“This means that managers who constantly provide the same rewards cannot expect increasing levels of motivation from their staff”
Fredrerick Herzberg
Asked people to tell him
2 stories from work:
- A positive experience from work
- A negative experience from work
Fredrerick Herzberg
“There are two types of motivators, one type which results in satisfaction with the job (actual motivators), and the other which merely prevents dissatisfaction (called hygiene factors)”
Motivators
- Achievement
- Recognition
- Work itself
- Responsibility
- Advancement
Hygiene factors
- Company policy and administration
- Supervision
- Inter-personal relations
- Money
- Status
- Security
Two gentlemen extremely influential
on the way we organise work
Fredrick Winslow Taylor
Introduced Scientific management
Henry T. Ford
Mass production of cars
Ford conquered the world
- Ford is famous implementing scientific management
- The flip side was alienation
- Job dissatisfaction
Introduced this thing called teamworking
- Teamworking first introduced in the early 1980s by Volvo, Toyota and General Foods.
- Now everyone does it
Teamworking must be understood
- Understood by the organisation
- Encouraged
- Supported
Rewards
- If the work is collective (i.e. teamworking), the reward should be too
- Material and intrinsic:
- Recognition from the rest of the organisation
Autonomy
- Output is visible
- Output has consequences for other people
Continuous development
- Continuous development of the team
- not just maintain the status quo
Do people perform better in a better environment?
Hawthorne
Western Electric, 1924-1932
Hawthorne
- Improved 💡 → improved performance
- Cleaner → improved performance
- Longer breaks → improved performance
Hawthorne
- Worse 💡 → improved performance
- Dirtier → improved performance
- Shorter breaks → improved performance
The Hawthorne Effect
That’s it
✏ torstein @ escenic dot com
Next time:
Comparing cultures
References
→ Hackman, J. Richard (1987). “The design of work teams”
→ Huczynski & Buchanan, “Organizational Behaviour”, 2001
→ Robbins, “Organizational Behavior”, 1998
→ Rosenfeld & Wilson, “Managing Organizations”, 1999
→ Taylor, Frederick Winslow, The Principles of Scientific Management, 1911